Free Fall
by poptart remix
Summary: Steve/Fem!Tony, or Captain America/Fem!Ironman XD Toni has an idea about making her suit fly with less power, but she has no idea that it will change everything with Steve.
1. Falling A Thousand Feet Per Second

**A/N: Cheezy ending, but I wasn't sure where to go after parts one and two. The line in italics in each part is from a song, points if you can tell me who it's by!**

_Falling a thousand feet per second..._

It only lasts a minute, but Steve is sure that the clock has died.

Toni had been working on modifications to her suit, and she had been sure that she had modified the power thrusters to allow flight, but with less power. And because Hank and Steve knew how the billionaire operated, they insisted they had to be there for her test flight. They hadn't been disappointed. Or rather, they hadn't been wrong, because Steve is definitely upset that Toni thought she could do something like this to them.

Toni never starts small. It is never "I wonder if I can make something that will let me fly", it's always "I wonder if I can make a suit of iron that will let me fly on earth and in outer space, and while I'm at it I should add weapons and a whole bunch of other things so I can beat up bad guys. And I may as well make it look like a man so no one will know it's me". Steve knows this. He knows it's why he loves her, even if he hasn't told her, or even gone on a date with her.

He had known she wouldn't start small now, but he had faith in her abilities as a mechanic and engineer, and as the creator of the Ironman suit and a genius. He had faith that she wouldn't do anything stupid.

But he had been wrong, and he swore that his heart was in his throat and his lungs stopped working as the power falters in the suit and she begins plummeting towards the earth.

"Come on, come on!" someone whispers, and it takes him a moment to realize it's him. Hank looks just as panicked as he feels, and a brief thought flashes into his head about why no one thought of the ability to fly when they made the super soldier serum. Hank is typing rapidly into the computer, Jarvis is trying to reroute the power to the original settings, and all Steve can do is grip onto the desk with white knuckles, feeling incredibly helpless as he watches the love of his live is falling a thousand feet per second towards her death. He isn't even outside, he thinks somewhere in the part of his brain that isn't filling with adrenaline, he's watching her on a computer screen and she's going to die all alone while he knows the exact speed that she's falling and the exact coordinates of impact and the amount of pressure on her body and so many other things that he doesn't want to know because _she's dying._

"Come on, Toni!" He roars, just as Jarvis finishes his adjustments and her suit thrums to life, and she swoops up and away from the ground that is just feet below her. Five and a half feet, the screens tell him, and with a sickening jolt Steve realizes it's her exact height. Another Toni length and she would have been Ironpancake, not Ironman or Ironwoman, whichever she's going by now, or a living breathing human that he didn't know if he could survive without anymore.

A crackle of static echos from the speakers, and then it clears and he can hear her whooping with joy. "That was fun, guys!" She cheers. "Let's do that again!"

Steve storms from the room, and he is miles away from her when he realizes she will never change, no matter how much he wishes she would, and he shouldn't try to make her. His motorcycle roars beneath him, and he presses it all the way from Malibu to Manhattan before he calms down enough to return to the Avengers Mansion and place a phone call to Hank to tell them he is alright.

Being in love with Antonia Stark is one of the hardest things he's ever done, but somehow Steve hasn't regretted a moment yet.


	2. She Means the World to Me

_...She means the world to me. I want to tell her that she's beautiful, and show her that she's loved. Hold her hand when she's scared, show her how much I care, but that won't win her heart because..._

Steve is avoiding her. Toni is sure of it. When she landed in the garage after her fall, only Hank and Jarvis had been waiting for her. Well, unless she counted Dummy, who had immediately doused her with the fire extinguisher, but that was too normal for words. Steve disappearing for close to two days without a word wasn't, and she wasn't sure if he realized how long it had taken him to call them. So she gathered her things, Hank, Jarvis, Pepper and Happy and hopped on a private jet, landing six hours later.

And now Steve is avoiding her, except in costume while on missions. But even then, he doesn't call her by her nickname like he tends to now that everyone knows who she is, only 'Ironman', and it stung. Even while Ironman was "just a bodyguard" for Antonia Stark, the richest woman in the world, CEO and major share owner of Stark Industries, and the best weapons manufacturer in the known universe, Steve had always been polite to her, even friendly, and she admits freely that it had been all to easy to develop a crush on the man. Even now that they were best friends, her heart still speeds up when she catches a glimpse of him, and she has ridiculous thoughts of throwing herself in front of him when he is being attacked, which is stupid because she knows that he can take care of himself, and he can handle himself better than she can when she isn't in her Ironman suit.

So even though she's pretty sure that her schoolgirl crush on the man who is more gorgeous than a god, and Thor is proof of that, has developed into love, Toni allows him to avoid her like the plague by hiding out in places he never goes, mainly the "roboroom", named by none other than Peter Parker when he and Harry had visited years ago, and her own quarters.

But even billionaires, or women that live in "iron" suits of armour, need to eat, so she waits until midnight to sneak out to the kitchens. She almost makes it, too, but ducks to the side of the wall when she hears Hank's angry whispering.

"How fair do you think it is to Toni that you're treating her this way?" he hisses violently, and Toni melts a tiny bit as she realizes he is defending _her, _because she knows that she isn't always his favourite person,"It wasn't her fault that she fell!"

"You think I don't know that," another voice responds just as severely, and she blushes as she realizes it is Hank and Steve in the other room. She should leave, she knows that, but she's curious beyond belief so she doesn't. "But that didn't mean her test run had to be flying thousands of miles above the earth. I almost lost her, Hank!"

"I almost lost her too," Hank reminds him softly, and Toni flinches at the ex-hero's tone. "What's up Steve?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Toni smiles softly, imagining a childish pout on Cap's face.

"Yes, you do," Hank says, and she wonders when he became so...wise. "You're in love with her, aren't you? That's why you're being childish, that's why you drove all the way from Malibu when she fell, that's why Jarvis and I had to fix the finger marks on her desk where you were holding on while you felt helpless to save her." He sucks in a breath, pausing for a moment before he whispers quieter and Toni has to strain to hear him say, "I would have done the same if it had been Jan up there," and her heart tears slightly.

Steve sighs, "Of course I love her. She means the world to me. I want to tell her that she's beautiful, and show her that she's loved, hold her hand when she's scared, show her how much I care, but that won't win her heart because she's Antonia Stark, and no matter how much I want to, I can't give her anything but me, and why would she want that when there are men out there who can give her the world? She's better off never knowing." The chair scrapes against the floor, and Toni has to pull some ninja moves to hide in the shadows as he stalks out. When she is sure she is safe, the back of her head hits the wall and the tears fall freely.

Men who claim to be in love with her she can deal with, but what is she to do with a man who really does, but doesn't want to be?


	3. Sooner or Later, I'll Need A Saviour

_Sooner or later, I'll need a saviour._

Suddenly, she's in front of him, and Steve doesn't know what she's up to. Toni's hair, which had been impossibly long before they knew she was Ironman but was cropped just short enough to tie back after she realized if she wasn't in her suit it could be used against her in a fight, looks like it had fingers forcefully dragged through it several times, and her eyes look slightly puffy and unfocused, a sure sign that she hasn't gotten any sleep for at least twenty-four hours. Her lips are raw where she's clearly been chewing on them, and she looks more scared, and more determined, than he's ever seen her. She also looks absolutely gorgeous, and his heart skips a beat before he can steel himself to her presence.

"From here on out, no more lies," she tells him, and he barely has time to nod, or wonder what brought this on, before her arms are around his neck and she's pulling him down a little, but also clearly standing on her tip toes, and her lips crash to his. For a moment, Steve is shocked, but when his mind pulls out of it his body has already responded and his hands are resting on her hips and pulling them closer and he's bending over just a little more so she doesn't have to stretch as much and nothing in his life has ever felt so right than this moment, besides the first time he held his shield. There is no demand in the kiss, or any rush for that matter, just a gentle exploration of what should have been a long time ago.

Just as quickly, she's a few steps away, and Steve had no idea that she could move that fast, or if the entire moment had been a daydream. But Toni has her fingers pressed to her lips, and she looks deliriously happy for a few seconds before she seems to steel herself. "I love you," she says, "and I know that sooner or later, I'll need a saviour and I want that person to be you. But I heard your conversation with Hank last night, so I won't ask for anything from you. I'm sorry that I scared you so badly. If you want to love me, feel free, but I won't force you into anything you don't want." She turns to leave, and Steve is wondering why she could ever think anything like that, so he grabs her wrist and tugs gently so that she's pressed against him again. She hides her face in his chest, and he chuckles slightly.

"I love you, Toni," he whispers. Even he can hear the slight deepening of his voice, and she shivers. Then they are kissing again, and nothing else matters but her hands in his hair and the warmth of her body and the press of her lips. Steve thinks he'll never get tired of this, and then all thoughts are abandoned in favour of deepening the kiss.

* * *

><p>Hank, Jan, and Thor watch the two on the security tapes a few hours later. Thor and Jan look shocked, and Hank is smug that he figured it out before they did.<p> 


End file.
